“There really are five Easter
Bunnies, and they must be the five kindest, and swiftest, and wisest bunnies in
the whole wide world…” So begins Du Bose Heyward’s inimitable The Country
Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes, first published in 1939 but oh-so-relevant
today. Cottontail, a little brown country girl bunny, dreams of growing up to
be an Easter Bunny, but all the big white bunnies and Jack Rabbits laugh at
her. She says, “Wait and see!” Time passes; Cottontail marries and has
twenty-one bunny babies to care for. As soon as her children are big enough,
she teaches them to cook and clean and wash and paint pictures and make music
to maintain their happy home. When one of the five Easter Bunnies retires, she
and her children attend Grandfather Bunny’s selection process for the next one.
Picking her out of the crowd and gently challenging her to prove her worth,
Grandfather Bunny, after seeing how resourceful and loving Cottontail is with
her children, says, “You have proved yourself to be not only wise, and kind,
and swift, but also very clever.” So it is that Cottontail helps deliver
Easter eggs to children around the world. When one daunting task remains – delivering a beautiful egg to a very
brave but ill boy at the tip-top of a mountain unreachable by others – she receives a special gift from
Grandfather Bunny: a pair of very tiny gold shoes that help her complete her
last delivery. She returns home with a basket of eggs for her children, finding
their home well cared for and her little bunnies asleep in their beds. The
sweetness and fluidity of Heyward’s prose plus the spring-like pastels of
Marjorie Flack’s iconic pictures together create a book beloved by generations
of readers. Ages 4 up.
